External Advisory Committee
Dr. Jette's research interests include late-life exercise, evaluation of rehabilitation treatment outcomes, and the measurement, epidemiology and prevention of disability. Dr. Jette is an international expert in the development and dissemination of contemporary outcome measurement instruments to evaluate health care quality and outcomes. He has published over 180 peer reviewed articles on these topics. He and his collaborators in the Department of Rehabilitation at the NH Clinical Center are assisting the Social Security Administration to improve their work disability determination process by analyzing existing social security datasets and developing new measures to be used within the process. Currently, he directs the Boston Rehabilitation Outcome Measurement Center funded by NCMRR/NH, serves on the Executive Committee of the Boston Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center funded by NIA/NH and is Co-Project Director of the New England Regional Spinal Cord Injury Center funded by NIDRR.
James Lubben, Ph.D., is the inaugural holder of the Louise McMahon Ahern Endowed Professor in Social Work at Boston College School of Social Work. Dr. Lubben has offered consultation to the World Health Organization regarding health and welfare systems development for aging societies. He served four terms (12 years) on the congressionally mandated Gerontology and Geriatrics Advisory Committee for the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Lubben is the founding director of the Institute on Aging at Boston College. His research considers social isolation as a behavioral health risk among older adults. To carry out his research, he developed the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS), an abbreviated measure designed for both research and clinical use among older populations.
Dr. Fredman has been with BUSPH for over 18 years as a professor and researcher, and is currently the Director of Faculty Development. Dr. Fredman’s research focuses on associations between psychosocial factors and disease, with special attention to elderly populations. She is conducting studies on the effects of chronic stress on psychological, cognitive and physical health outcomes in elderly caregivers and non-caregivers, and on the health effects of positive affect. Examples include a randomized trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction in caregivers to persons with dementia; Caregiver-SOF, a cohort study of elderly women caregivers and non-caregivers that is ancillary to the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF); and studies of metabolic syndrome, inflammation and HPA-axis markers as potential mediators of the association between stress and health outcomes. Her other research is on psychological factors that affect outcomes of hip fracture. Dr. Fredman teaches courses in the epidemiology of aging and epidemiologic methods. Prior to joining BUSPH in 1998, Dr. Fredman spent eight years as a faculty member with the Departments of Family Medicine and Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Dr. Susan L. Hughes is a professor of community health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health and the codirector of IHRP's Center for Research on Health and Aging. Dr. Hughes, a gerontologist and health policy analyst, has conducted numerous studies in the field of aging for more than 20 years with support from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disease, the Veterans Health Administration and numerous private foundations. She has considerable experience conducting multi-site randomized trials. She conducted the national evaluation of the 20-site Living at Home Program that was funded by the Commonwealth Fund and Pew Charitable Trusts and conducted a cooperative study of the effectiveness of team-managed home-based primary care at 16 VA hospitals across the country (see Hughes et al., 2000).
Dr. Hughes is principal investigator of the UIC Midwest Roybal Center for Translation and which has completed four longitudinal intervention studies about exercise adherence in older adults. She designed the award-winning, evidence-based Fit and Strong! physical activity/behavior change program for older adults with arthritis. In collaboration with the National Council on Aging, she directed a multi-site randomized study of outcomes among older adults participating in physical activity programs at three community-based best-practice sites across the country.
Dr. Sharon L. Tennstedt is a health and social/behavioral scientist, retired from her position as vice president of social and behavioral science and director of the Institute for Studies on Aging at the New England Research Institutes (NERI). She has designed and conducted a wide range of studies, including surveys, epidemiological studies, behavioral intervention trials and clinical trials. Her early work was in the field of informal caregiving, conducting the first longitudinal study of informal care and formal service use in a random sample of frail older adults and their caregivers. She has designed and evaluated many behavioral intervention programs for older adults, including programs on doctor-patient communication, end-of-life care decision-making and fear of falling. This latter program, ‘A Matter of Balance,’ was developed and evaluated through the Boston University Roybal Center. It was the first major intervention to address fear of falling and associated restrictions in physical and social activity in older adults, and was winner of the first APHA Archstone Award for Excellence in Program Innovation. This evidence-based program has been widely and successfully disseminated throughout the US, with replication studies in several countries. Dr. Tennstedt has also been the PI of several Data Coordinating Centers for NIH-funded multi-center clinical trials, including ACTIVE, the first randomized trial and long-term observation of the effect of cognitive training interventions on cognition and everyday functioning in older adults, and the Urinary Incontinence Treatment Network, which conducted several randomized controlled trials for surgical and behavioral treatment of incontinence in women. Dr. Tennstedt held faculty appointments at the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Social Work, was president of the Massachusetts Gerontology Association, a member of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) Advisory Council, and a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.